Sports sticks, such as ice and field hockey sticks, comprise a shaft for holding the stick and a blade at one end of the shaft. From their inception, these types of sticks have typically been constructed entirely of wood so as to be a unitary entity. Even today, many such sticks are constructed in this manner. With unitary construction type sticks, breaking of the blade necessitates replacement of the entire stick, including the shaft.
Recently, there have been developments with respect to two-piece stick construction where the shaft is reusable and the blade is removably mountable onto the shaft. By way of example only, such developments in hockey sticks include reusable shafts made from aluminum or various composite materials, which shafts are fitted with replaceable wooden, plastic, or composite construction blades.
One form of replacement blade for a reusable aluminum or composite shaft requires that hot melt glue be applied directly to the shank of the blade. The hot melt glue is heated up and melted at the time of fitting the shank into the shaft. When the glue has reset, it secures the blade to the shaft.
Although the above hot melt glue system does provide a very positive interlock between the shank of the blade and the shaft, there are a number of problems associated with it. It requires significant heating, which is inconvenient and undesirable, and it is time-consuming because it is difficult to force the blade onto the shaft as substantial force is required. Also, the shafts tend to crack because they are subjected to repeated heating and cooling and also because of the significant force required to mount the blade onto the shaft. Further, it is generally not possible to replace a blade during a hockey game, if a blade should break, but must be done later.
With such two-piece type hockey sticks where glue is used to help retain the blade in place on the shaft and also with conventional one-piece wooden hockey sticks, it is necessary, and indeed mandatory, in some hockey leagues, to have at least two, or preferably three, hockey sticks, at the start of each game. In the event that a player's hockey stick breaks, there is always a hockey stick in reserve. Owning three or more hockey sticks, however, can be prohibitively expensive, especially the two-piece type hockey sticks. Further, it is necessary to carefully select each shaft of a two-piece hockey stick or each conventional one-piece wooden hockey stick, in order to obtain a desired weight, size, balance, and so on, which is time consuming and undesirable.